Preliminary Material

10.1163/ej.9789004176379.i-258.2

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Chapter Summary

This front matter section of the book titled Boundaries and their Meanings in the History of the Netherlands contains the Table of Contents, a list of illustrations and the Acknowledgements. Traditionally, the term boundary applies to the demarcation between a physical place and another physical place, most commonly associated with lines on a map, and usually used synonymously with the term border. The chapters in the book show a boundary can also function in a more broadly conceptual manner. A boundary becomes not an "imaginary line" but a tool for thinking about how to separate any two elements, whether ideas, events, into categories by which they become comprehensible and distinct. With its maverick history and grass-root political traditions, the Netherlands provides an auspicious setting to examine the historical function of boundaries both real and imagined.